Method of dealing predetermined hands

ABSTRACT

A method of dealing predetermined bridge hands is described in which the predetermined hands are obtained by performing an operational sequence of card rearrangements (S 1, the inverse of S, defined below) on certain designation hand lists. These lists are obtained by performing a chosen set of operational sequences (S) on the predetermined hand by a non-player. The lists in no way give a clue to the players of the content of the predetermined hands to be dealt. Provisions are made for comparing the resulting score achieved, after play of the hand, with that which other partnerships were able to obtain. The overall method is a desirable aberration of duplicate bridge.

[ 1 Jan. 9, 1973 OTHER PUBLICATIONS Book of Magic by John Mulholland, published by Charles Scribners Sons, New York, NY, 1963 pages 80-9l relied on.

Primary Examiner-Anton O. Oechsle Attorney-Curtis H. Castelman, Jr.

[57] ABSTRACT A method of dealing predetermined bridge hands is described in which the predetermined hands are obtained by performing an operational sequence of card rearrangements (8", the inverse of S, defined below) on certain designation hand lists. These lists are obtained by performing a chosen set of operational sequences (S) on the predetermined hand by a non- PREDETERMINED HANDS John B. Traylor, 3285 South Newport, Denver, Colo. 80222 Filed: Oct. 9, 1970 Appl. No.: 79,540

U.S. P Int. 1/14 Field of Search ...273/l49 P, 152.2, 152.44

References Cited UNlTED STATES PATENTS f I ohmmw r d fl h m m P m nm fimuwf h ew Wa S 0 0 0.l N nee u hh g h e .l l iT F cd w .a ei c g a ni n .lad m m .l wm w .l mab a hO I I0 f 66 00 D W fflm n 4 9 m m hm s on u mm Q on xv. 3 E mm on we I am n flwm m2 2 N o. m m e. w m e m N .m h a m m w h .53 2922930 m m W C m 2 w m mmz 5 mew $5.62 OCeW 9 v rl l e x IFKOZ em aPM 0 m w h m a m. a U EB Tm sh S as H 2 NM nodwmw T mm E 66 6" R. 695 ..N y V.l. L EL m mm m Lww ml tPaDtm W LN wcE I l 3 T M Z MAE N% 8 n TE N 1 SM PZlP 4 n u SM AER 92 9 A S ENM 4554 2 E V AT .l l 5 D l 8 RH MUN S N we m M N n mOCflI m m w 2 m zmqzmm 2mm c .zmm mrm m u m m T m $202562 :3 m m M m M? N. u. a. w. m. m. w. 6. N. a. m mm l m @160 an 1 .6 mu N: em 6 m mo 2 m: u "n L m S.C m m M u A .m ..m u e R w I u .l w; O m k S t Tm m h CSHH m G T 0697 A l 7666 P 4 9999 9 HHH N H 2224 G 4 l I E 4433 R 9 4227 O 6 .3 F 06002 5 532 3 5 3333 United States Patent Traylor [54] METHOD OF DEALING [76] Inventor:

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JH lOD KC 9C lOS BC 90 45 20 OD 5H QC 7S DESIGNATION L|ST PATENTEDJAN 9 I975 SHEET 2 OF 2 PREDETERMINED HAND WEST EAST DEALER H-Al074 D-Q8642 D-AK975 NORTH SOUTH H-QJ98532 c- A K J'IO 5 FIG. 3.

NS EW EW CONTRACT BY MADE DOWN SCORE POINTS SCORE POINTS 58 SOUTH NORTH WEST SOUTH WEST FIG. 4.

METHOD OF DEALING PREDETERMINED HANDS BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION While contract bridge has been popular for a number of years, it has suffered a number of disadvantages that have had the tendency to detract from the enthusiasm for the game. In ordinary contract bridge there are frequent redeals, boring hands, cold hands and usually only a few hands in a session which really excite or challenge the player. Often, the enjoyment or success derived from an evening of bridge depends entirely upon whether the player was dealt good cards, i.e. dependent upon the element of chance, over shadowing the relative skill of the player in playing the cards he was dealt.

For the particularly zealous player, the challenge of duplicate bridge is available. However, duplicate bridge requires a number of tables, numerous players, a separate deck of cards for each table, and special boards with pockets for the hands of four players, where the hands are returned to the pockets when play is completed and the players must continually switch tables. Many rubber bridge players who would like to test their skill in comparison with other players are discouraged to join these duplicate gatherings for a number of reasons, including improper timing and location of the gatherings, the extreme formalness and cutthroat atmosphere pervading the play, lack of truly exciting hands, et cetera.

It is recognized by many that bridge can be made much more exciting if predetermined, interesting hands are dealt which test the skill of both the contracting and defensive partnerships in a game. In the past, this has generally been accomplished by using an outside person to make-up prearranged hands, or to place identifying marks on the cards themselves (e.g. US. Pat. Nos. 1,418,020 and 3,236,524) or, additionally, machines for dealing out the hands (e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 2,051,615). In some instances, a book is furnished with the marked cards to explain the way an expert would play the hand.

It is an object of the present invention to overcome disadvantages of heretofore employed bridge playing methods.

It is another object of the invention to devise a bridge playing method in which redeals and boring hands are avoided.

It is another object of the invention to minimize the element of luck in a bridge game, instead challenging the relative skill of all the participating players.

It is still another object to achieve a challenging game without having to resort to such expedients as marking the cards, use of complicated dealing apparatus or outside persons to make-up the hands.

It is a further object to achieve an interesting, didactic method of playing bridge, yet employing the usual rules of contract bridge.

These and other objects of the invention will be met and more clearly understood by a reading of the following description and claims.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Briefly described, the invention entails a means for dealing predetermined bridge hands including (1) obtaining a designation array list or hand for each player and displaying it before each of them, (2) collecting the mined hand. The results of playing the hand are compared with results obtained by other partnerships who played the hand, and a score is assigned which closely reflects the skill of the respective players.

IV. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS With reference to the Figures: FIG. 1 depicts a typical designation array list; FIG. 2 illustrates the tableau formed during a selected shuffling procedure according to the inven-- tion;

FIG. 3 lists the predetermined hand derived from the designation lists of FIG. 1; and

FIG. 4 illustrates a method of comparative scoring.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The invention will be more fully understood by the following example in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and tables, in which S spades, H hearts, D diamonds and C clubs. This example is merely illustrative of one embodiment of the invention and is not meant to limit the invention thereby.

The predetermined hand shown in FIG. 3 is chosen for the interesting character and challenge to the skill of both the North-South and East-West partnerships.

The designation array lists for each of the players from which the hand of FIG. 3 is obtained is shown in FIG. 1, in an arrangement adapted to be placed in the center of the playing table facing the players and specifying 13 cards to be picked up by each player from an exposed deck. The operational sequence is begun by arranging face down in ascending order starting with number I, the 13 cards, to form four piles of 13 cards each. The specified dealer, who is East in this example, arranges the piles according to the Arrangement Code, which is NESW, so that the Norths pile is placed face down, Easts pile on top of Norths, next Souths stack and finally West's pile, ending with one stack of 52 cards face down in front of the dealer. It is readily seen that there are 4 factorial or 24 possible combination arrangement codes and four different dealer combinations so that there are 4X24=96 possible correlations between cards in the designation lists and their counterpart in the predetermined hand to be dealt. Given a number of hands, it is thus seen how difficult it would be for a player. to become familiar with or memorize the correlations, even if he had played the same hands over and over.

The operational sequence continues with the shuffling or rearrangement procedure shown in FIG. 2. The dealer divides the deck before him into seven piles as follows: Starting at his left he should place the top card face down, the next beside it, et cetera until there are sever in a row; return to the left and add one card at a time face down on each of the first six piles; the process is repeated for five piles, four piles, three piles, two piles and finally one pile, similar to common solitaire. The remainder of the deck should be dealt on top of these seven piles in reverse, starting at the right dealing one card on each pile; return to the right and repeat, for six piles, five piles, four piles, and finally to only the first two piles. The finished tableau should have the appearance of the arrangement shown in FIG. 2. The dealer should pick up the sever piles face down as follows: First the pile in the middle, next the pile farthest to the left on top, then the pile farthest to the right on top, next the pile farthest left, farthest right, farthest left and then the remaining pile, accumulating a single pile of 52 cards in front of the dealer. The operational sequence is completed.

The pile is now dealt out in conventional manner, without disturbing the cards (such as by cutting) in a clockwise manner to the four players. If the cards are dealt out in neat stacks, maintaining the order of the cards, the hands will automatically be arranged according to suit and denomination, obviating sorting and arrangement of the cards as required in normal rubber bridge, and serving as a check on the entire process. The highest ranking spade will be at the players left, the lower ranking following, next the hearts, clubs and diamonds.

The bidding and play of the hand follow the standard rules of Contract Bridge. A contract at which a partnership arrives is completely up to the partners own discretion. Each hand is scored individually, tallying the points for trick values, bonuses and penalties. Conventional scoring or any type of modified scoring may be employed to more equitably distribute the scoring. In the example shown, standard scoring is employed except for the following bonus changes: 50 for part score, 300 for contract for game if made and not vulnerable, and 500 for contract for game if made and vulnerable. The designation list states whether a partnership is vulnerable.

, As is shown in FIG. 4, five comparative plays are depicted, showing what the partnership contract was, how many tricks were made, and their score. The final tally is in match points (columns 6 and 8 of FIG. 4) awarded to both the declaring and defending partnerships and determined by comparing their scores with the score of these five other North-South and East- West pairs who previously played the same hand. The North-South match points plus the East-West match points always total 8. The maximum number of points attainable is 9; the minimum attainable is minus 1. The match point scores are determined as follows: If the partnership score is the same as another pair who played the same position, they receive the same number of match points; if the score is different from any of the five pairs listed, then one match point is added or subtracted, depending on whether the partnership score was higher or lower respectively, than the closest pair used as a comparison. For example, if the score is between the score of the pair who received 6 match points an 4 match points, then the score becomes match points, the opponents getting 3 match points.

The five comparative partnership scores may be obtained by any available means. In most cases, it is preferable to have relatively highly skilled players as reference pairs to best challenge the skill of the players seeking to achieve the highest match point score possible. Obviously, a number other than five reference hands may be used and the scoring system modified.

As previously discussed, the designation lists may be obtained by performing operations on the predetermined hands which are the exact reverse of the chosen shuffling procedure operations, hereinbefore described. If this process had to be done in this long back tracking manner each time a new designation list was to be formulated, a formidable task would be presented. To simplify, unique coding relations are used to map the hands immediately into the corresponding designation lists. There will be one coding relation for each arrangement code. To accomplish this, position numbers 1 through 13 are assigned to East; South 14 through 26; West 27 through 39; and North 4i)v through 52. Tables I and II depict such a coding relation-in this instance for the arrangement code NESW. In this particular case, East is the dealer and list A maps Souths hand into the designation list; list B maps Wests hand into the designation list; list C maps Norths; and list D maps Easts. The predetermined hand is shown in Table III. When the corresponding coding list is placed next to the hand, for instance West (B of Table I) to West, it is seen that card number 48 is the 5 of diamonds, card 28 the 7 of diamonds, and so on. Thus, in the designation list (TablelV) position 48, which is in Norths list, if filled by the 5 of diamonds and position 28 in Wests designation list carries the 7 of diamonds. It should he noted that the designation lists in Table IV correspond to those depicted in FIG. 1 of the drawings as one would expect. While this method is a simple and relatively efiicient way of arriving at the designation list, it is apparent that a simple computer program could be employed to increase speed and obviate human error in making the required translations.

TABLE I POSITION IN DESIGNATION LISTS A B C D 43 48 2 9 22 28 35 46 52 7 15 9 24 30 40 44 49 3 I0 27 34 5| 6 l3 16 20 2s 31 3s 4! 45 50 4 11 33 5 l2 I4 17 p 21 26 32 39 I 42 47 l 8 I8 23 29 36 TABLE II DEALER NORTH EAST SOUTH WEST ARRANGEMENT ESWN swNE WNES NESW TABLE III Hands N s E w IOD 3D 2D 51) 5C JD 4D 7D lOC 3C. 6D 9D 1C 6C 8D KD KC 33 OD AD AC 65 ac 2C 2H 78 4H 4C 3H as 7H 7C 5H 9s 10R RH 108 AH QC JH 08 45 KB QH KS 55 AS TABLE IV Code: NESW Dealer: East Designation L1sts E s w N 1: IR 14: SH 27 68 40 8D 2; D 15; 10C 28 7D 41 SH 3; KC 16: 4C 29 OH 42 0S 4: 9c 17: AH 30 KD 43 3D 5: 10S 18: KS 31 SS 44 3S 6: 8C 19: 6D 32 9H 45 7H 7: 9D 20: 21-1 33 [OH 46 4D 8; 4s 21; J8 34 2C 47 KH 9; 21) 22; .ID 35 5c 48 51) 10: 0D 23; AS 36 5s 49 AD 1 1: 51-1 24; 6C 37 JC 50 98 12; QC 41-1 38 7c 51 AC 13- 7s 26- 6H 39 2s 52 3c It will be understood that the coding relation shown in Table I applies only to the particular shuffling procedure described in this example. Thus, if a different tableau is formed than that described and shown in FIG. 2 of the drawings a different coding relation would apply. For instance, an 8 rather than a seven-pile rearrangement scheme could easily be employed. Likewise, a number of designation lists other than four could be used.

It should be understood that the invention is capable of a variety of modifications and variations which will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Such is to be included within the scope of this invention.

What is claimed is:

1. In a bridge game, an improved method of dealing predetermined hands so that none of the players of the hands are alerted to the identity of the cards of the hands held by other players, the method comprising:

a. obtaining a designation array of cards by performing shuffling or rearrangement operation(s) on the predetermined hand so that the designation array obtained is no way alerts the players of the content c. performing the reverse shuffling or rearrangement operations on the designation hands from those employed under (a), whereby each player may be dealt the predetermined hand by dealing to the players in a conventional manner.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein results obtained from play of the predetermined hand are compared with results obtained previously from play of the same predetermined hand by other player partnerships.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the comparison is made with a plurality of playing partnerships as references, and assigning a score to the play of the predetermined hand according to the success of the play as compared with the references as standards.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein given a chosen particular shufi'ling or rearrangement operation, a unique coding transformation relation is empirically found which matches the cards in the predetermined hand in a one to one correspondence with counterpart cards in the designation array, thereby providing an immediate formulation of the designation array from the i iiiii?h%% %f claim 1 wherein a set of four designation lists are displayed before each player who collects the listed cards before him to form a pile of thirteen cards.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein the piles of each player are stacked in a particular order specified by an arrangement code to form a single deck of cards.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the deck of cards is rearranged into a plurality of stacks.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the stacks are regrouped in a particular sequence to form a single deck of cards preparatory to dealing out the predetermined hand.

9. The method of claim 1 including the further step of displaying on a sheet the designation array of cards obtained according to step (a). 

1. In a bridge game, an improved method of dealing predetermined hands so that none of the players of the hands are alerted to the identity of the cards of the hands held by other players, the method comprising: a. obtaining a designation array of cards by performing shuffling or rearrangement operation(s) on the predetermined hand so that the designation array obtained is no way alerts the players of the content of the predetermined hand to be played; b. forming the designation array from a deck of playing cards; and c. performing the reverse shuffling or rearrangement operations on the designation hands from those employed under (a), whereby each player may be dealt the predetermined hand by dealing to the players in a conventional manner.
 2. The method of claim 1 wherein results obtained from play of the predetermined hand are compared with results obtained previously from play of the same predetermined hand by other player partnerships.
 3. The method of claim 2 wherein the comparison is made with a plurality of playing partnerships as references, and assigning a score to the play of the predetermined hand according to the success of the play as compared with the references as standards.
 4. The method of claim 1 wherein given a chosen particular shuffling or rearrangement operation, a unique coding transformation relation is empirically found which matches the cards in the predetermined hand in a one to one correspondence with counterpart cards in the designation array, thereby providing an immediate formulation of the designation array from the predetermined hand.
 5. The method of claim 1 wherein a set of four designation lists are displayed before each player who collects the listed cards before him to form a pile of thirteen cards.
 6. The method of claim 5 wherein the piles of each player are stacked in a particular order specified by an arrangement code to form a single deck of cards.
 7. The method of claim 6 wherein the deck of cards is rearranged into a plurality of stacks.
 8. The method of claim 7 wherein the stacks are regrouped in a particular sequence to form a single deck of cards preparatory to dealing out the predetermined hand.
 9. The method of claim 1 including the further step of displaying on a sheet the designation array of cards obtained according to step (a). 